Iraqi forces, including militiamen from several Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), used Iraqi Kurdistan’s referendum as a pretext to attack Kurdish Peshmerga troops, and retake the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, last October.

Around five months on, Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are yet to reach a political settlement and fully normalize diplomatic relations. In addition to attacking Kurdish forces, Iraq seized all of Iraqi Kurdistan's border crossing and airports, effectively isolating the autonomous region.

Nechirvan Barzani, the Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, has been leading efforts to resolve the dispute via dialogue, meeting with a number of world leaders — including German Chancellor Angela Merkel — to pressure the Iraqi federal government to negotiate.

A Kurdish official reported yesterday that only international flights for pilgrims to Saudi Arabia will resume service, despite Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi previously promising to lift the flight ban.

Relations between the KRG and Baghdad were strained prior to the referendum, with the Iraqi federal government not sending Iraqi Kurdistan its share of the federal budget since 2014.

PM Barzani has also been negotiating to resolve this matter based on the country's constitution, but both parties are yet to agree on a 2018 budget for the KRG. Iraq's PM recently promised to provide the KRG will some emergency funding to pay government employees, but it's unclear if he will follow through.

"We might send the salaries of employees [of the KRG's health and education ministries] before Newroz [Kurdish new year]," PM Abadi said during his weekly press briefing.

Meanwhile, Iraqi President Fuad Masum called for an "emergency meeting" with Erbil to discuss the budget dispute, Kurdistan24 reported, without mentioning when the meeting is scheduled to take place.

Hello,
!

We are committed to protecting your personal information and we have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new EU regulation that went into effect on May 25, 2018.

Please review our Privacy Policy. It contains details about the types of data we collect, how we use it, and your data protection rights.

Since you already shared your personal data with us when you created your personal account, to continue using it, please check the box below:

I agree to the processing of my personal data for the purpose of creating a personal account on this site, in compliance with the Privacy Policy.

If you do not want us to continue processing your data, please click here to delete your account.

promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;

contains links to viruses and malicious software;

is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");

“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;

violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");

doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.